Determination of a small photon number by statistical amplifying transients

Year: 1989

Authors: Arecchi F.T., Meucci R., Roversi J.A.

Autors Affiliation: Istituto Nazionale di Ottica, Largo E. Fermi 6, 50125 Firenze, Italy;
Department of Physics, University of Firenze, Italy;
Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Campinas, S.P., Brazil

Abstract: We introduce a “statistical microscope” which allows the accurate determination of a small number of infrared photons inside a laser cavity by optical (rather than electron) multiplication. For this purpose, we induce a loss switch in a CO2 laser and then measure the statistical distribution of passage times through a threshold value within the linear regime. Our approach is model independent, since the measured cumulants provide both average values and associated error bars. Furthermore, our method discriminates the initial photon number from noise contributions along the amplifying path, thus it does not depend on the statistical features of the amplifying process.

Journal/Review: EUROPHYSICS LETTERS

Volume: 8 (3)      Pages from: 225  to: 231

KeyWords: Quantum optics; CO2 lasers
DOI: 10.1209/0295-5075/8/3/004

Citations: 25
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